THE VALE OF MOWBRAY - A Northern Coast to Coast Walk: From St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay - page 86

when called upon to do so, was unable to find the entrance to the cave again. Whether
this henpecked potter was the same man who discovered the king and his knights in
a cave below the Bwlch y Saethau, near Snowdon in North Wales, while escaping once
more from his nagging wife, is not recorded - nor, indeed, what he used to drink, and
in what quantities!
In similar vein is the story of how soldiers quartered in Richmond determined to test
an old tale that a secret underground passage ran from the castle to Easby Abbey.
Unwilling to make the journey themselves, through long dark tunnels with precarious
roofing and foul air, they filled the head of a young drummer boy with visions of treas-
ure and sent him into the tunnel. As the boy struggled on, he rattled away at his drum,
while the soldiers above ground traced its muffled sound through the streets of the
town. Fainter and fainter came the sound of the drum until, near the site occupied by
the former grammar school, it ceased altogether. Whether the boy ever found his treas-
ure is not known, for he never returned. But, so it is said, on a quiet night you can still
hear the sound of drumming, very faint and distant, coming from underground.
On a less sceptical note, Richmond's Market Place is the largest horseshoe market
place in England, and was once the outer bailey of the castle. It was re-cobbled in 1771,
when Matthew and Mark Topham were paid sixpence a yard to find stones and set them
in place. How far they looked for their stones is open to debate, for the present-day
obelisk is on the site of a medieval cross that was pulled down in the same year. Below
the obelisk, incidentally, is a reservoir holding 12,000 gallons of water, which was piped
into the town. A water supply pipe, circa 1782, will be passed on the way out of town.
The Chapel of Holy Trinity, which stands in the centre of the Market Place, was foun-
ded in 1135. It has been altered and repaired many times, and has seen service as a
court, prison and school. Today it is the Regimental Museum of the Green Howards, the
county regiment of the old North Riding of Yorkshire.
For walkers doing their best to escape towns and cities for a while, there are op-
portunities to bypass Richmond (crossing the Swale to Hudswell, for example), but
really the town and its feeling of saturated antiquity is altogether too good to miss. And
though the castle dominates, there is below its towering walls a labyrinthine network
of narrow alleyways and back streets, 'wynds', formed by groups of quaint, haphazard
buildings that would give modern planners apoplexy, should anyone submit a planning
application to build today in the same style. Throw in the Culloden Tower, built in 1746
to mark the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie by the Duke of Cumberland, and the odd
folly or two, and the whole town becomes an open-air museum of the grandest kind,
and a tribute to those people of Richmond who have helped to preserve its unique char-
acter through the centuries.
The Vale of Mowbray is the northerly extension of the Vale of York, and an
interlude that is almost wholly agricultural. It is largely flat, and at Danby
Wiske reaches the lowest point of the walk away from the coasts.
Though undoubted pleasure awaits those who enjoy high-level walking,
as they cross the Cleveland Hills, I can think of no valid reason, other than
shortage of time, for rushing across the vale. It is a marathon crossing, a
forced march that will leave your energy depleted the next day, when what